It makes me sad to hear all the Danes doing Danish things.
Here I am a Dane (50%, with 25% Icelandic, and 25% Misc.
Canadian) two generations removed. My dad (100%) speaks
the lingo, but other than counting to ten and calling my
sister a frog I'm out of luck. Oh, when Christmas comes I
might manage "Merry Christmas".

I came away from my Java project with some unstructured
ideas
about what I liked and didn't like about Java .. what I
liked
and didn't like about software development for that matter.
Recently I sprung for a book that is helping me put it in
perspective, Component
Software - Beyond Object-Oriented Programming. A
good
discussion (441 rather dense pages) about what might make
seperately deliverable software componets work. (As
a subtext, I wonder if Microsoft is on to something when
they hire these guys.)

I think UNIX has a lot of obvious strengths. Beyond the
technical strength of many small programs all the same, UNIX
is an ecosystem. In an other environment, someone might
propose an integrated solution of the
packaging/library/language problem ... but it would likely
be offred as the solution. If it is wrong, the whole
ship sinks. In UNIX people are trying everything, and they
all have to fail for the ship to sink.

I guess we should be a bit patient, and take a look
around at what people are doing. Some people might have
solutions that work within the UNIX environment.

It is interesting what you learn about yourself over the
course of an open source project. That's because people are
always giving you advice. The best advice comes with code
attached, and is a little easier to digest. I sometimes
manage to listen. I learned a lot about the new OO
by trying to wrap my head around (Java) code that was sent
me. Other times I've felt that advice was not really
applicable, only to look back years later and see what I
missed. As an example, there was a guy that wrote me that
my Mac shell would really be useful if hooked to a port as a
telnet daemon ... not what I was interested in, not my focus
... (with hindsight) what a great idea! I suppose it's too
much to expect, that we take good advice every time it's
offered, but I try to listen a little more carefully ...

I almost forgot, my tiniest open source project might be my
most-visited. When I first started playing with Java (late
'96) I posted a small maze
applet. That bit of code ended up being linked to a lot
of kid's pages, and earns me charming notes from the little
tikes, saying things like "you suck" and "you need color".
Perhaps I should have built the maze applet out a bit more,
but that wasn't the original point.

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